Page 35 of The Agent
“Please tell me that you’re Natalie!” His slightly nasal voice shook.
“Yes, I am. May I ask who you are?”
He thrust out his hand. “Dobs Van Houten. I’m Regina’s husband. That’s what I came to talk to you about.” He took a breath and spoke almost on a sob. “I’m hoping—no, praying—you know where she is.”
A steel band seemed to wrap around her chest and squeeze while she stared at his outstretched hand. It had finally happened. A husband had somehow connected her with his wife’s flight. Now she had to pretend to be nothing more than a concerned but uninvolved bystander.
Although it made her nauseated to do so, Natalie shook his hand, finding his grip surprisingly firm. She kept her expression neutral and said in her most sympathetic tone, “Oh dear, I wish I could help you, but I wasn’t aware she was missing.” She turned to Bianca. “Could you check the last time Regina was here for an appointment?”
Fortunately, she knew the appointment had been at least three weeks before Regina had requested her assistance. Bianca gave her the date. “She hasn’t been here since then,” Natalie said. She was trying to picture this man angry enough to threaten to throw his wife down the stairs. He seemed too vapid to generate that much emotion.
But she knew how deceiving appearances could be. Everyone assumed her marriage with Matt had been ideal.
He rubbed his forehead. “She told me she was going to New York City to sightsee with her cousin, who was visiting. They were supposed to stay in a hotel for a few days. When she didn’t answer her cell phone, I called the hotel. I found out she never got there.”
“That sounds scary. Did you call the police?” What Natalie really wanted to ask him was if there might be a good reason that his wife ran away from him.
“Not immediately. I thought there must some reasonable explanation.” He looked up at her, his eyes a pale, watery blue. “They haven’t found her, so I’m trying to contact anyone who knows her.” He looked around at the busy salon. “Could we go somewhere more private?” he asked.
“Why don’t you sit down in the lounge over there?” She gestured to an empty chair on the mani-pedi side, where it was less crowded. She had no intention of being alone with him since she knew he was capable of hitting a woman.
He hesitated before nodding.
“Just give me a moment and I’ll join you.” She returned to her waiting client. “I’m so sorry, but I have a very upset man here whom I need to calm down. Is it all right if I have Gino finish blowing you out?” The ladies loved Gino, both for his muscles and his charm. Her client gave an enthusiastic assent, so Natalie waved Gino over before she walked back to where Dobs Van Houten sat slumped in the chair.
“I’m so worried about her,” he said. “I’m afraid she’s in some kind of trouble.”
Natalie forced herself to arrange her face in an expression of dismay and concern when she really wanted to slug him. “Did you check with her family to see if her cousin knows anything?”
His gaze dropped to his hands where they rested on his thighs. “She wasn’t close to her family. They don’t know where she is.”
That was an oddly indirect answer. “What about her friends?”
“She isn’t from around here, so she hasn’t had time to make a lot of friends.”
Because like many abusive husbands, he had done his best to isolate her so she would have no one to talk to and no one to support her.
He lifted misery-laden eyes to her. “Something bad must have happened to her. Why else would she just disappear?”
Because his wife was terrified he would injure her or even kill her.
Regina had come to Natalie’s house with her clothes stuffed in a gym bag, shaking and sobbing. So Natalie had given Regina the guest room, fed her, and let her use her phone and computer to set up her escape. She’d warned Regina to erase whatever searches she’d made and not to tell Natalie anything about where she was going.
That way Natalie only had to lie about her guest staying there, not about where she went afterward.
“Did you have a fight?” Natalie asked, trying to behave as though she knew none of this. “She might have gotten upset about that.”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. I adore her.”
He probably believed he did. Matt had always told her how much he loved her, even as he did everything he could to crush her into nothingness. That was the insidious part of psychological abuse—she had trusted him because of that love.
“I’m sorry I can’t do more to help you,” Natalie said. “But your wife has been a client of mine for less than a year.”
“I think youcoulddo more to help me,” he said with a brief flash of anger. He held up his hand in apology. “She always spoke so highly of you. I think she looked up to you as a role model.”
“Me? That’s kind of you, but we didn’t have that kind of relationship. She was just my customer.” This was getting weird now. She and Regina had been nothing more than client and stylist until Natalie had seen the bruises on the other woman’s forearms. As she had snipped the ends of Regina’s hair, she’d quietly offered her sanctuary if she ever needed it. Natalie had not asked for a response nor gotten one. Until Regina’s appearance on her front porch.
His eyes flickered. “I had hoped ...” He rubbed his forehead again. “I don’t want to share this with anyone else, but Regina was pregnant.” His voice cracked on the last word. “I would be destroyed if something happened to her and to our unborn child. There are two lives I’m trying to protect.”
